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In this original and insightful new take on Spinoza, Morfino convincingly argues that materialist philosophers must base themselves on Althusser.
List of contents
Preface: The Multitude and the Moving Train, Jason E. Smith
Introduction
1 Causa Sui or Wechselwirkung: Engels between Hegel and Spinoza
2 Spinoza: An Ontology of Relation?
3 ‘The World by Chance’: On Lucretius and Spinoza
4 The Primacy of the Encounter over Form
5 The Syntax of Violence between Hegel and Marx
6 The Many Times of the Multitude
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Vittorio Morfino is a Senior Researcher in the History of Philosophy at the Università di Milano-Bicocca. He has been a visiting professor at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the author of Il tempo e l’occasione. L’incontro Spinoza Machiavelli (Milano 2002, Paris 2012), Incursioni spinoziste (Milano 2002), Il tempo della moltitudine (Roma 2005, Paris 2010) and Spinoza e il non contemporaneous (Verona 2009). He is an editor of Quaderni materialist and of Décalages
Summary
Plural Temporality traces out a dynamic historical relationship between the texts of Spinoza and Althusser. It attempts to understand Spinoza’s thought through Althusser’s insights, and in the process to better interrogate Althusser’s own philosophy. From the fragmentary intuitions Althusser produced about Spinoza throughout his life, Morfino builds a new and comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy. In the later sections of the book, this interpretation is put to work to help to clarify some of the more problematic aspects of the late Althusser’s philosophy, thereby offering new concepts for a materialist position in philosophy and the development of Marxist theory
Foreword
Features in Historical Materialism
Promotion targeting left academic journals
Published to coincide with the annual Historical Materialism conference
Publicity and promotion in conjunction with the author's speaking engagements 
